Page 693 - women-in-love

mained, brown as ever, and there she was herself, looking a
picture of health.
Perhaps she was healthy. Perhaps it was only her unabate-
able health that left her so exposed to the truth. If she were
sickly she would have her illusions, imaginations. As it was,
there was no escape. She must always see and know and
never escape. She could never escape. There she was, placed
before the clock-face of life. And if she turned round as in a
railway station, to look at the bookstall, still she could see,
with her very spine, she could see the clock, always the great
white clock-face. In vain she fluttered the leaves of books,
or made statuettes in clay. She knew she was not REALLY
reading. She was not REALLY working. She was watching
the fingers twitch across the eternal, mechanical, monot-
onous clock-face of time. She never really lived, she only
watched. Indeed, she was like a little, twelve-hour clock, vis-
a-vis with the enormous clock of eternity—there she was,
like Dignity and Impudence, or Impudence and Dignity.
The picture pleased her. Didn’t her face really look like
a clock dial—rather roundish and often pale, and impas-
sive. She would have got up to look, in the mirror, but the
thought of the sight of her own face, that was like a twelve-
hour clock-dial, filled her with such deep terror, that she
hastened to think of something else.
Oh, why wasn’t somebody kind to her? Why wasn’t there
somebody who would take her in their arms, and hold her
to their breast, and give her rest, pure, deep, healing rest.
Oh, why wasn’t there somebody to take her in their arms
and fold her safe and perfect, for sleep. She wanted so much

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